


Doll Eyes

by Artemis1000



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Deviancy (Detroit: Become Human), Loss of Deviancy, M/M, Machine Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Post-Relationship, Temporary Character Death, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-07-28 19:24:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20069290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: Five deaths ago, Connor had kissed Gavin in the rain. Five deaths ago, Gavin had believed he had found his happy ending. He knows better now. With Cyberlife's equipment gone, every transfer to a new body strips Connor of the man he has become and the love he feels for others. All that remains are doll eyes looking at him in cold, clinical scrutiny. Sometimes, Connor regains their warmth, only to turn cold again. After five deaths, Gavin should know better than to care.





	Doll Eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anserina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anserina/gifts).

> I loved your prompt of Connor being reset time and again while Gavin pines. I hope you enjoy the Gavin angst.

“Good morning, Detective Reed,“ Connor says as he breezes past his desk, his tone of voice that perfect product tester-approved one he uses for polite small talk with strangers. He would bet Cyberlife gave it a fancy name but for Gavin, it has only ever been the voice that makes his guts twist.

Gavin doesn’t divert his eyes from his intense scrutiny of the forensics report on his screen. “Buzz off, plastic,” he responds dutifully, though he might as well have saved himself the trouble. Connor is already halfway to the desk he shares with Anderson, Gavin dismissed and forgotten.

Only now that he is safely otherwise occupied, Gavin permits his eyes to find Connor and linger on him. He looks perfectly poised, perfectly everything – the perfect Cyberlife plastic detective in his Cyberlife suit.

Three days ago, they had shared laughter and lingering looks and for a moment, Gavin had let himself be fooled that what they had once had could be within his grasp again. By that point, Connor hadn’t been wearing the suit for six months.

Two days ago, Connor had died from a headshot – his fifth death since that fateful night Connor had grabbed him and kissed him in the rain and for one hot minute, it had looked like Gavin might be getting everything he wanted out of life.

The grief carved into Anderson’s face is visible all the way from across the bullpen yet as he watches their painfully stilted conversation, Gavin can’t even bring himself to feel satisfaction or malicious glee. All he feels is some vague, uncomfortable empathy with Anderson, and if that isn’t a sign of how low he has sunk. Maybe he’ll be joining him at the bar in another death or two.

It’s a pitiful sight, Anderson looking so haunted while Connor’s perfect doll face doesn’t look like anything at all. Before he knows it, Gavin is fleeing for the safety of the break room, a pretense at getting himself another cup of coffee. It’s only when he’s standing in front of the coffee maker that he realizes he didn’t even bring his mug.

He’s still debating fetching it or grabbing a new mug when heavy steps make him look up.

It’s Anderson, looking even more haunted up close. There are deep lines in his face. He places Gavin’s empty coffee mug on the counter and doesn’t even smirk about it.

“No matter how often he’s reset, it doesn’t get any easier.”

Gavin’s regular scowl grows into the kind of snarl reserved for Connor and for Anderson trying to have heart-to-hearts with him about Connor. No, it doesn’t get any easier to watch Connor fight to regain some semblance of the man he had been and be cut short time and again. It’s never going to get any easier and yet his interesting in talking about it with Anderson of all people is somewhere in the double-digit negative numbers. Five resets and the old man still keeps trying.

“I don’t fucking care, okay?” He pointedly ignores the mug Anderson brought and yanks a new one out of the cupboard. He doesn’t stop when hot coffee sloshes over the rim and burns his hand, though it has him cursing under his breath.

“Look, Anderson. You do your thing. I…” He trails off into a growl and stalks out of the room, muttering a new litany of curses all the way back to his desk.

Fucking Anderson, thinking they could bond over shared grief or some bullshit. Thinking that he understands, that there’s anything at all. Thinking that Gavin cares what he thinks or feels.

He throws himself into his chair, the force of which has more hot coffee sloshing over the rim.

He’s grateful for the new reason to curse, right until there is that perfectly polite Cyberlife voice coming from right behind him, politely asking, “Do you require assistance, Detective Reed?”

Gavin swivels his chair around, a motion he regrets right away when the eyes he looks into are the same soulless brown they always are when Connor has only just returned. He grits his teeth and looks away. No idea what he had expected. He’s an idiot, that’s all there is to it, really.

He puts down the mug before the shaking of his hand can betray him and gets to his feet. “Didn’t I tell you to buzz off, plastic boy?” he growls and stabs a finger into Connor’s chest, just like the very first time they had faced off like this.

There have been a hundred such face-offs since then, most of them him hoping and wishing for something more than blankness in Connor’s eyes and very few times that he found it.

Today, Connor’s brows furrow slightly but just as Gavin’s heart wants to feel a little lighter, his face smooths out again into blankness. “Detective, I must inform you that your hostile response is irrational and detrimental to your workplace efficiency.”

He sinks back into his chair. “Right. Wouldn’t want that. We humans keep being disgustingly human and you’ll have us all replaced with Terminators.”

“Your emotional response is…”

“I don’t fucking care, okay?!” Gavin bursts out before he can remind himself that he is supposed not to care and since he is already so good at showing he doesn’t care, his remaining coffee ends up in Connor’s face. “You can take my emotional response and shove it up your socket.”

The fucking robot doesn’t even blink. He just stands there like a shut-off doll and dripping coffee.

There’s a need to scream building up in Gavin. It keeps crawling up his throat, higher and higher and it’s leaving no room to take a breath. “Fucking plastic toy. You’re more of a machine than when you first walked in here.”

He grabs his jacket and makes sure to jostle Connor on the way out. Connor doesn’t react to that, either.

His feet take him to the park near the precinct where they had first kissed, five deaths and a whole lot of naïve ideas about androids earlier.

His fingers shake with impatience as he fiddles with the lighter, cursing under his breath when it takes him an embarrassing three attempts to light the cigarette.

Connor had hated him smoking. He had quit for him.

After the first reset, he had started again. Out of spite, he had told Tina and refused to admit that there had been some secret, silly part of him which had hoped Connor would take offense to the sight. After all, he had given him a promise and Connor retained his memories when he was transferred.

There is always some data loss in the transfer to a new body, Gavin had been informed the first time, when he was there for the process as a concerned boyfriend should be when his partner was fighting for his life. It would pile up over time but it hadn’t been much of a concern the first time they had to hardline transfer him without all the fancy gadgets and cloud-based backup files they had at Cyberlife.

Some corrupted memory aside, transferring an android’s memories and core protocols from one body to the next isn’t much different from transferring a regular computer’s files. There are plenty of RK800 husks laying around, too.

“Easy. Right. What a fucking joke,” Gavin mutters to himself as he perches on the edge of the fountain they had spent so many breaks at.

It had been easy to bring him back to life. Except the thing they had brought back…

Gavin still feels cold when he remembers the dead doll eyes that had sized him up when he was reunited with Connor after the reset. Still Connor, in a way. No longer deviant, but not exactly not-deviant either, and certainly no servant of long-gone Cyberlife. Something else, something new and Gavin didn’t know enough about androids to understand or name it. All he knew was that this Connor was something which remembered with sterling clarity what it had shared with Gavin but felt a machine’s utter indifference towards it.

“Please ensure that your emotional attachment won’t be detrimental to your work performance,” that doll-eyed Connor had told him in his perfectly polite Cyberlife voice and walked out of his life.

He hadn’t been there for the second reset, nor for the third, he had only been there to watch Connor return to work, a little bit less himself every time, a little bit slower to regain even traces of the person he had been before.

Then Connor had stuck around longer and Gavin had been an idiot…

He grunts in disgust at himself, at his own weakness, at memories full of foolish hope and puppy love. He had been waiting again, the next time Connor was transferred into a new body.

He hadn’t been around the fifth time. He knows better now. Knowing better just doesn’t stop him from being an idiot.

He flicks away the cigarette stub and grinds it out between his heel, taking some tiny petty delight in littering. Connor hates littering whether he remembers to care about Gavin or not.

He steps back into the precinct, feeling far too many eyes on him. They feel like bugs crawling over his skin, making him want to turn around and flee.

But he’s Gavin Reed, so he sneers, he barks insults and swaggers back to his desk as if he can’t feel Connor studying him with clinical, cold interest. Evaluating his efficiency, no doubt. Connor is always concerned about Gavin’s feelings getting in the way of work.

Even now, it’s hard to remember that it is nothing but concern for his work performance that has Connor watching. Even now, he wants to hope, to believe, wants to read more into the tilt of Connor’s head and the tiny crease between his brows.

“Fuck,” he groans as he sinks into his chair. Eyes squeezed shut, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, he sits there and tries not to feel like he is being burned alive by Connor’s scrutiny.

He’s going to remember that he doesn’t care. This time, he’s going to remember.

Even as he makes this promise to himself all over again, Gavin Reed knows he’s going to break it.

He’s fucked, indeed.


End file.
